Growing Wild

This is the picture prompt for the GBE2 (Group Blogging Experience) this week, with the theme ‘Growing Wild.’  You can find links to the other blogs here.

It was the topic rather than the picture which made me think of other flowers which grow wild.

In 1915, a Canadian doctor, John McCrae was in charge of a field hospital during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium, tending hundreds of soldiers who were wounded in the carnage of the Western Front.

One of his closest friends died and was buried in a makeshift grave with a simply wooden cross.  Wild poppies were already starting to bloom between the many crosses marking the graves, and this inspired McCrae to write what is probably the most famous poem of that dreadful war.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

The poppies still grow wild in that area of Belgium, but now in peaceful meadows where it’s difficult to imagine the mud, bloodshed and horror of the war which destroyed almost a whole generation of young men.  And, of course, the red poppy became one of the symbols of remembrance of all those who died.